Rubicon Project And xAd Team Up; Tumblr Offers New Ad Product

Rubicon Project and xAd are combining their capabilities to bring scale and precision to programmatic mobile advertising. xAd claims it “verifies location data signals for accuracy and validates the physical location of the signal,” within 80 milliseconds. Dan Hight, xAd’s head of platform, sees an opportunity to tap “a new roster of premium advertisers via Rubicon Project’s private marketplace platform.” The two companies will embark on a joint roadshow to pitch their combined capabilities to agencies and trading desks. The Drum has more.

24-Hour Tumble

Tumblr debuted a new ad product on Thursday, dubbed Sponsored Day, that lets brands place an ad at the top of a user’s dashboard for 24 hours. Nike is the first brand to trial the unit, and Tumblr says other clients are on deck to follow in the coming days. Sponsored Day is Tumblr’s second ad unit (after Sponsored Radar) and follows its recent ad products, Creator’s Network and Sponsored Video. Tumblr’s head of creative strategy, David Hayes, tells Adweek, “The brand can also curate a whole bunch of content from the community. In [Nike's] case of women's fitness, the content can come from the community or the brand's own blog.” Tumblr now reaches 460 million consumers worldwide and will price the new product on a CPM basis.

‘In A Relationship’ Or ‘It’s Complicated’?

Yahoo and Microsoft have agreed to amend their existing partnership, which was formed in 2009 by the predecessors of both current CEOs. The agreement will provide Yahoo with “increased flexibility to enhance the search experience on any platform,” and “Microsoft will become the exclusive sales force for ads delivered by Microsoft’s Bing Ads platform.” The agreement gives Yahoo more latitude with its search ad results, though Microsoft will still represent the ads for a majority of user traffic on desktop. The change also means Microsoft can further integrate its sales and engineering teams. The underlying economic structure, with Microsoft sharing revenue from ads directed via Yahoo searches, will remain in place. Read the release.

Breaking Print’s Revenue Dams

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), a magazine trade group, has once again revised its standards to adapt to digital media. In recent years, ASME loosened restrictions on what qualifies as a magazine, a move that showed more deference to publications that focus on the digital world. Ad Age notes two major new changes. First, “Discouraging cover ads [used to be] the first item on the list; now there's no specific language dissuading publishers from selling cover ads.” Second, the association, known for its strict editorial standards, is now allowing editors to work on sponsored material, just not for companies they report on. In a fight for its life, the print publishing world is loosening up its standards to squeeze out more of that precious, precious revenue.

Twitter Spreading Its Wings

Twitter revealed its redesigned homepage on Thursday. The new look is chock full of content, almost like an online magazine. The move is in line with Twitter’s goals of convincing non-users who view tweets to sign up, as well as to provide more documentable eyeballs for advertising. The move comes as Twitter tries to assign value to “the many millions of people who visit every month who don’t log in,” according to a company blog post. Twitter also recently finalized a deal with Google that aims to extend the social platform’s reach and increase its advertising real estate. Faced with audience growth concerns, Twitter’s trying to prove it can offer value beyond its user base.